The student newspaper of Randall High School

Silver Streak

The student newspaper of Randall High School

Silver Streak

The student newspaper of Randall High School

Silver Streak

    Quietest place on Earth

    The Anechoic Chamber at Orfield Laboratoratories in Minnesota can mute 99.99 percent of all sound, and is the official “quietest place on Earth.” The building was first put on the map as Sound 80 Studio, where Bob Dylan recorded “Blood on the Tracks.” Companies around the world seek this place’s unique acoustic properties for important while the super-silent oasis is a great testing area for various products, it holds a darker side: complete silence, as it has been proven can put a great strain on the human brain. NASA researchers have tested the room’s acoustic abilities on products but mainly humans. Orfield Labs is a room, inside of a room, inside of a room. With six sided anechoic chamber is a small room floating in a pit on I-beams that are on top of springs. A five sided chamber of the same structure surrounds it on the edge of the pit. Both chambers are made of double wall steel-insulation-steel.The walls of the room are lined with sound-absorbing baffles that can capture noise and mute it in an instant. In a room where almost all sound is muted, people begin to hear things like their own heartbeat at a greatly amplified volume. As the just a few minutes go by in absolute quiet, the human mind begins to sort of freak-out, causing test subjects (humans) to hallucinate. The study shows that when all sound is shut off human hearing is desperate to listen to anything. According to lab officials at NASA, the longest time anyone has lasted was 45 minutes before becoming delusional.

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